Researching with ‘Local’ Associates: Power, Trust and Data in an Interpretive Project on Communities’ Conflict Knowledge in Myanmar

This article discusses the merits and challenges of qualitative-interpretive research into violent conflict, which gives local research associates a central, fairly independent role at the data-generating stage. Specifically, we reflect on our collaboration with three Burmese research associates in organising and implementing two arts-based workshops with participants from violence-affected communities in Myanmar’s Kachin and Rakhine states. Against the context of research in a controlling semi-authoritarian state, we focus on how structures and multi-directional flows of power and dynamics of trust/mistrust shaped the way in which the workshops unfolded, which in turn co-determined what kind of textual and visual data was gathered. We conclude that re-search in ‘mixed teams’ of Global North researchers and Global South research associates is able to overcome some of the limitations of conflict research by cultural outsiders such as trust-building with research participants and language and cultural under-standing, but that especially in short-term projects these merits may come at the price of ‘losing control’ over the quality and type of research data, with both positive and negative effects.